greek unemployment hits a grim new ha according to figures revealing record levels of people out of work in the eurozone. economic worries drive them out to set himself on fire. the u.s. military wants to carry out would like to take center stage by giving out bottle accolades to soldiers operating american drones. there's been no response from british police one week off the report revealed a shocking culture of neglect by hospital stall for the deaths of hundreds of patients. government demonstrations in two year anniversary of the

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protest movement in bahrain reportedly result in a teenager's death. it's the big picture with thom hartmann here and i'll say. lorenzo marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture yesterday the president of the n.r.a. published an op ed painting america as the most dangerous place in the world crime and danger lurks around every corner and where guns are our only salvation is defeating all gun control measures by scaring the hell out of america the n.r.a. has new strategy also next week georgia will likely execute an intellectually disabled man even though the u.s. supreme court has declared executing the mentally challenged illegal is the time we

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did away with the death penalty so that horrendous situations like the one in georgia can be avoided and later in the show we'll have a your take my take live your chance to call in ask a question or make a comment live on the air. you need to know this the n.r.a. is executive vice president wayne la pierre envisions an america beyond thunderdome in america that say for gun manufacturers but nobody else on wednesday la pierre published an op ed with a conservative website the daily caller explaining why gun safety is a bad idea and why americans must be armed to the teeth at all times over all of last year's arguments in the in the apocalypse arriving soon la pierre writes president obama is leading this country to financial ruin borrowing over

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a trillion dollars a year for phony stimulus spending and other payoffs for his political cronies nobody knows it for a while in the phillip fiscal collapse but if the country is broke likely won't be enough money to pay for police protection and the american. people know it here that warns of all the dangers that would arise in this was a hypothetical where the president fired all the police he writes hurricanes tornados riots terrorist gangs lone criminals the these are perils we're sure to face not just maybe it's not paranoia by a gun it's survival it's responsible behavior and it's time we encourage law abiding americans to do just that and don't forget about those undocumented immigrants who will kill us all for unarmed la pierre adds the president flagrantly defied the two thousand and six federal law ordering the construction of a secure border fence along the entire mexican border so the border they are remains porous not only to people seeking jobs in the u.s.

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but to crab and all those whose jobs are murder rape robbery and kidnapping so in other words being afraid grab your guns and if you don't have one by one from lisbon a factor that in effect sure this other manufacture that gives us money and don't just be afraid of marauding undocumented immigrants and terrorists and debt riots be afraid of your government too that was the gist of what la pierre said a few weeks ago when he testified in front of the senate on gun safety. we need the fire power in the ability to protect ourselves from our government. from our government from the police if they knock on the doors and we need to fight back do you agree with the point of view center on it without any doubt if you look at why our founding fathers put it there they had lived under the tyranny of king george and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny well chief johnson you've heard

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it. the belief the n.r.a. is the second amendment has to give american citizens the firepower to fight back against you against our government that's now so how do you conduct your business in enforcing the law and not knowing what is behind that door i find it to be it it's scary create a. simply it's just not based on logic but logic and the n.r.a. never got along so this is the n.r.a. his latest strategy defeat all gun control measures by scaring the hell out of america as might have been tonio attorney and host of ring of fire radio mike welcome back. i'm great is wayne la pierre a raving lunatic or is this guy crazy like a fox not at all this is been focused to death look the fear in america is a powerful moving force tom visions of smaller even massive apocalyptic events help listeners become irrational it makes them stupid to the point that it becomes easy

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and maybe even justified to even for reason we educated americans to stand behind the senseless slaughter of our children in schools because that's that's the end of the sentence if you think about it but here's what's happened they didn't just come up with this themselves the same madison avenue group who gave us the idea that smoking won't kill you and they did that for decades that kept people believe in god if you smoke a cigarette you're going to be ok they were very very good at what they did these people have simply been hired now to do the same thing so these visions of latin america and african american drug gangs in this mad max kind of america that helps sell guns but it has been focused to death you start off with a culture who's who's very afraid to begin with and just just just throw gasoline on the fire you know i'm wondering where are the historians i mean i've read the federalist papers. i've read you know many of the debates in the in the

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constitutional convention as madison recorded the i've read some of the ratifying conventions fact just you know we just did a long piece of the virginia ratifying invention nobody ever was suggesting that americans should be armed to take on america it was always about in the norm. anyway it was always about americans being armed or having local militia to protect us more effectively than an army or to prevent a military coup by a standing army during time of peace and of course down in the south the states wanted to be armed so that their slave patrols could be could keep operating as as their local militias but nowhere did i see any of the founding fathers talk about well some day we you know we all may be may need guns just so we can shoot ourselves i mean we can shoot at the politicians who follow us i don't get it. you know you could look for ever and not find it because back then when that when we looked at the second amendment we we had a constitution that had some real meaning to people that were rational enough to

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read and understand it there wasn't the money factor involved tom today you have smith wesson smith and wesson ruger beretta bushmaster they're donating a hundred and fifty million dollars a year to the two hundred twenty seven million that the n.r.a. brings in every year people don't understand that when you buy a gun the n.r.a. makes money they actually get a percentage there's something called the round up program tour they're actually paid a percentage in the end of gun sales and so if you're listening to these crazies understand they're not crazy they're just simply greedy thugs who've lost sight of decency and they've exchanged decency for the idea of making big money this is all about money and we forget that sometimes we want to overanalyze and say well gee the constitutional arguments don't make any sense the rational arguments don't make any sense of course they don't because we're dealing with hogs at the trough right

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now and so you have a guy like barry who's out front here this is a guy that has a long history of being a lobbyist everything that comes out of his mouth is said just like a lobbyist and he's very very good because he's focused the points he understands that we're he's dealing with american society that's fearful of damn near everything so let's help it out by talking about the apocalypse right and he's earning his million dollar your paycheck apparently certainly is he certainly there was an n.r.a. spokes person or member document came out i believe it was late last week where they were talking about how you know their plans for lobbying and promoting gun ownership and whatnot in the future and for fighting against gun control laws basically they said let's just hold off for a moment this is paraphrasing here let's just. hold off until the connecticut moment that was the phrase that they use the automatic at moment passes do you think that the connecticut moment obviously referring to the slaughter of those

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children in newtown connecticut do you think that that moment is going to pass as the n.r.a. thinks or do you think that the united states has actually turned a corner that the american people have have you know looked at something ugly and said whoa now now we know. president obama said it right he said until the american public gets angry enough to do something about it nothing will happen we've seen it with columbine we've seen it with aurora we've seen it with the sikh temple shooting it happens we have the media pay attention to it until the next story comes around and then the n.r.a. takes their two hundred twenty seven million dollars that they bring in every year and they simply pump out the machine in the machine the machine makes us forget now what they've done now tom is that the n.r.a. is not as is interested in the national fight is they are in the state fight so they're going state to state and they're using this two hundred twenty seven million dollars to pack the attorney general's office the state supreme court

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office the state attorney's office they're actually bringing about change state by state that's their new plan they say we don't really care about the national fight what we're going to do is we're going to win state by state anyway so you see these secretive spook organizations like the sling called the law enforcement alliance of america interesting organization it is the industry fraud it's the same thing as alec it's the same thing as the chamber of commerce for associated industries it is nothing but that for aught that goes state to state changing the laws state by state so they don't really care much about that national fight anymore they have to be out there for the fight but they really do care state by state that's where we're going to see the big money spent these next couple of years and people will forget what happened this last massacre yeah it's it's extraordinary pap i'm curious your thoughts today chuck hagel was the first defense secretary ever

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filibuster i mean going back to the george washington administration the first time this is ever happened to a nomination for just a defense secretary by the president states and this is after harry reid took you know. breaking the turning the filibuster into a talking filibuster. off the table because presumably mitch mcconnell had entered into a gentleman's agreement with him how do you think this is going to play out it's going to be a disaster that is going to be a disaster for obama for the next four years harry reid was a miserable failure there's no other way to say it but he knew exactly what was coming at him can you imagine sitting in a room with a bunch of republicans listening to them say look you can trust us you can ignore our history ignore what we've done for these last four years you can trust us the problem with harry reid is he's too damn old for the job tom i was just with harry reid he came to eat came to los vegas on

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a program that i put on several months ago and he was he was so weak in his presentation up in front of the in front of this group of people i had to ask the people who brought him to please get him off of the stage because he is so weak and he's a weak leader and that's why the but by allowing the filibuster reform not to take place all he's done is he's created four more years of gridlock disaster obama has his hands tied obama can give us the best state of the union speech of the wants he can have great ideas about the future but harry reid blew it in there's no other way to dress this up tome. but i think you have syria might happen tony and thanks a lot for joining us then you. after the break what is it that conservatives don't understand when it comes to the rules of capitalism and don't americans struggling to survive deserve to make the wages they can live off them.

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if. he gave. you the.

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new year's celebrations on the move without the traditional t.v. or festive food surprising meetings and new adventures stories of love and love lost our russians teach foreigners to celebrate them biggest holiday of the year from moscow st petersburg by train over. them may be miracles. in the best of the rest of the news let's talk football as we all know football is again and like all games football has rules there are rules on the field like how many players can be on the field how many downs each team gets how many yards for a first down stuff like that you know fine if there were no rules on the field it

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would be chaos there also rules off the field there are salary caps so that one team can spend way more money buying up all the good players than another team has revenue sharing so the teams in smaller cities like green bay can stay on a level playing field with teams in bigger cities like dallas and when one team does really well in one season they have to go to the bottom of the draft or to the next season while the worst team from the season goes to the top of the draft order the following year all of these rules are necessary to create a dynamic competitive game that tens of millions of americans love for example do no fun at the dallas cowboys since their wealthier than all the other teams could just buy up all the good players get all the good draft picks toward all the revenue they can collect and win every single super bowl right so that's why there are rules capitalism is again too and it needs rules to rules ranging from how much money banks need to have on the books reserve capital requirements how much pollution companies can dump in the environment to what can and cannot be patented or copyright and in tuesday's state of the union address president obama proposed

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changes to one of the rules of capitalism the minimum wage. a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line that's wrong tonight let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth no one who works full time should have to live in poverty and raise the federal minimum wage to nine dollars a night so here's an idea that governor romney and i actually agreed on last year. let's tie the minimum wage to the cost of living so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on just like the rules are needed in football to keep the game competitive a basic minimum wage is needed our economy to keep it competitive too we need rules so that working people can still be productive members of the economy so that someone working forty hours a week is not living in poverty unfortunately republicans in congress aren't going along with this speaker boehner responded to the president's call for a minimum wage increase by saying you raise the price will i don't guess what

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happens you get less of it at a time when americans are still asking the question where are the jobs why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people you must also want to make it easier for the dallas cowboys to win every single super bowl because they're the wealthiest again so what is it that conservatives just don't understand when it comes to rules and capitalism let's ask austin peterson director of production of freedom works and editor of the libertarian republic dot com ok what is that you guys don't get about having just basic rules for capital you know there should be rules but the rules should be the rule of law and the way that economics works is that if you have a minimum wage what happens is is that all the people who are unskilled labor are able to get jobs so what you're doing is you're raising that tsar's on a lot you're raising the bar of the ladder and so people are unable to get all that true yes i am sort of their head is very true and name which here is the problem which minimum wage increase because increasingly what happens if you have it happen here's what happens if you don't notice one please let me answer your question if

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you increase wages what happens is that employers in order to pay for it they increase prices so you get inflation and so if he comes more expensive it's an hour for people to be able to live this summer so every time that you increase you know you actually respond to you please ok there are a number of things that are being an employer for years and years i can tell you there are a number of things employers do in response to anything from minimum wage increases to simply your employees coming and saying we want a raise and that if you can become more efficient you can have people were more hours or work better or smarter you could. the productivity of the equipment that you're using with people you can produce your own profit so the there are your own take home pay and ultimately at the very end of the day you can increase the increased prices if you want to and if you look at the studies on the minimum wage what you find is that american employers since the one nine hundred thirty s. when the minimum wage was first put into effect have consistently virtually every single time have have chosen the first three long before they raise prices because if i raise prices i'm making myself less right in with the next person who may well

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but the first minimum wage holmes wage laws were made because they wanted to make sure that blacks were not able to compete with white labor so if you look remember the ninety's wage laws not said. yes this you know he's going to they did no one as they did not want black workers quite other without argument has made against negatives that argument has been you know that the minimum wage laws are meant to kill so it is not a lot of jobs yes it is that's meant to keep people who are unskilled labor from being able to get jobs why don't we raise the minimum wage to one hundred dollars an hour tom why do liberals never ask that you're here you're going to one of several dollars in dollars on our song what are out let's start out with your i know it's destroying the economy this is us capitalism was for a minute destroying as equals i believe her sister destroying lives women and children that for a second i am not it's not about racism it is adding the first guy who proposed minimum wage you know was who was there it was it was president try a parent president teddy roosevelt you know this isn't a president i see under of the progressive era awfully thin presidents of nice you know one of the knights you know never seen in the united states you're a wilson who segregated the military the father the progressive daughter on the lawn and we'll call isabel was talking about how minimum wage she called it

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a living wage she said a living wage must be necessary to be able to raise your kids have it have did make it through times of sickness right i mean it was an economic area just like every other president i know what the real minimum wage is tom. you to the real minimum wage of zero certainly as long as you can just because you are destroying jobs so you want to create jobs so your work you have to allow capitalism to work set stable rules and recapitalising without any trade policies trade policies such as what time. of course you want to get rid of all the trade policies as well so forget minimum wage again i defy you to name one a year we've had we've had a minimum wage since nine hundred thirty five one year when raising the minimum wage caused unemployment to go up or cause an increase in. the of people unskilled labor who can't find you i can't answer that question no you can't answer that question as you it does not exist lol yeah every stories i am on isn't statistic every single time the minimum wage has gone up what happens is people who are minimum wage workers spend one hundred percent of their income those are the job

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graders in our economy that's where you want to close the job creators in our economy and if you give more money to people who spend a hundred percent agreement on a new side here picking winners will get there all right they're picking winners by wiser picking when to go into stores and buy this or a buy this i know i like that word i know it's meant to keep minorities to this is absolutely it is yeah why it has gathered the noise doesn't sound they have you want to stop as they do the job hard on the most from these poskim you're going to ride in the waters dry and to stop the job creators from being job creators i'm not tom i'm in a long way off workers harming our minimum wage workers are the job creators and you want to keep them from creating more jobs a person ever gave you a job tom every single poor person who ever spent money every time every business that i've ever owned where i was selling products i was selling products to consumers and those consumers in many cases were poor people in the system this is no way this ever since adam seventy one and while it's not at all back and we realize that maybe wage war theory and moral sentiments actual he wasn't totally perfect as well there well there was an ok day every day on ricardo at eighteen i

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was seven on labor i mean he lays it out this is this this is not more money does not locking your paychecks not when inflation rises along with the wages because every time you raise the wages no wages has never has never lead to inflation it leads to increases and you cannot or i will the will of the parasite indeed we will often peterson thank you thank you joe. good news next week the state of georgia will execute warren lee hill and intellectually disabled man who is deemed mentally retarded at trial unless the u.s. supreme court steps in and takes up the case but the u.s. supreme court shouldn't have to step in that's because that highest court in the land has already ruled that executing individuals deemed mentally retarded their phrase not line violates the eighth amendment and the it amendments ban on cruel

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and a new usual punishment however thanks to a very harsh procedural tech technicality in georgia state law that state has managed to work around the supreme court's ruling warren lee hill isn't the first intellectually challenged individual to be on death row in america and he certainly won't be the last everything stays the way it is so it's not time we did away with the death penalty and came up with responsible alternatives to this barbaric practice joining me now is mike farrell actor author and president of death penalty focus mike welcome back to the program thanks john nice to be with you thanks for joining us what are your thoughts on the war and lee health case that's in georgia right now well you know it's you it's easy and fortunately easy to point to georgia as being a backward state to do with regard to criminal justice issues you look back at troy davis and you look forward to the war in a legal case you you understand to do that say. really executive situation

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but it is i think it's indicative of the fact it is really understood sciri inappropriate system continues to exist in our country as you suggested why can't we just wake up and realize that there are alternatives that keep us safe but don't waste all the money that it definitely and the don't dehumanize people and don't do human eyes us in the process and also the don't put to death innocent people i mean the the death penalty is your. valcke of all and every year we find another dozen fifty one hundred people who have been you know in our d.n.a. evidence had been sent off to die bag you know decades ago and it's just it's just now how is georgia managing to skirt federal law in this case well they've they've the federal law unfortunately allowed rather than simply applying it they said they left it up to the states to determine what constitutes retardation or one with retardation and the beyond

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a reasonable doubt premise or position is the one that georgia has maintained whereas throughout the country in the rest of the killing states at least the preponderance of the evidence really makes a determination as to whether or not one is one is so good it has retardation. so the atkins decision was written by justice stevens and allowed a certain amount of latitude to the states georgia has taken advantage of that latitude and has made the the beyond a reasonable doubt philosophy the preponderant decision making philosophy in a case of despair. a determination of mental retardation yeah and it's very easy for somebody to say well i have a reasonable doubt so we have a case of a warren lee hill who has an i.q. of about seventy. facing death for a situation that in no other state in the union today would he be facing death and

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it's it's if you look at situations like you know about the case of andre thomas in texas a man whose pluck both of his eyes as a result of his paranoia and is still looking at death in texas there the prosecutorial ranks are filled with people who want to win a conviction and win an execution because it somehow makes them passes pass off as as. more leaders in their community well that's a sign that we have really trip down a very ugly road and our are teaching our children as well as teaching each other that human life means nothing with him like in the half a minute or so we have left can you tell us about your group death penalty focus. death only focus is a california based group that it could operate across the country opposing the death penalty we came within four percentage points of eliminating debt in

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california and with proposition thirty four in the last election and we will clearly end the use of that not only in california as we are now in maryland very soon i think in montana it is very close you know hampshire is looking at it connecticut as you know just did it and the use of the death penalty so the the tide is in the tide is in our favor everybody is beginning to understand that as you segregating innocent people that it's a it's a racially biased hugely expensive system that is going to just corrupting as they are committed barbarity and then the name of the state we all become a little more barbarous and that's a real tragedy if your society like feral thanks so much for being with us tonight my pleasure will be right back with your take my. this is. going to take three months for charges three. arrangement